PALOMA BENNETT- Gavin Booth
Of course it wasn't. I knew how stupid it was to hope the two cannons were Caio and whichever one he killed before the other killed him. But I'd still hoped. Just like the rest of us still went on even though all three Careers were left. It would have been nice to have known Paloma better. We spent our entire lives in the same place and before the Reaping I didn't even know her name. She deserved better than that.

JEZZEBELL FERN- Grande St. Leger
My life was snapped into two sections: before I burned and after. Nothing in the eighteen years I'd been alive was the slightest approximation of how much it hurt to burn. If the fire hadn't gone out nearly instants after I started to roll, I would have cut my own throat. I wouldn't do that to someone else even if it was what would win me the Games. Jezzebell marked me body and soul.

Hades Rodriguez- District Seven mentor
I was just a kid. They thought I could teach people how to win the Games. I was a scared kid who hid in a refridgerator until everyone else died. I didn't know anything about winning the Games. One look at my track record proved that.

District Seven
Two more gravestones stood in a toy- and flower-riddled part of the cemetery. Parents grieved and friends mourned. And a single one-eared man breathed a little easier.

Gavin Booth- District Ten male

Grande. Elissa. Caio. Meenah. And me. Three of those made sense. I kept running through the names in my head, going through the Districts in order and coming up with the same number. Five of us left. One of them was me.

I had no idea. If I was being honest, I never thought I'd get this far. I really had no business being here. People like the Careers had the skills. People like Jezzebell or Yttria had the talent. To be dark about it, Enzo deserved it more than me. He seized his destiny in his own hands and proactively did what he needed to in order to survive. I just lagged behind him and whined about how immoral it was while I benefited from what I condemned.

Enzo might not be entirely to blame, either. I was self-aware enough to know I was charming and also self-aware enough to know I used it. Did I encourage him, spur him on a little? When I constantly held him back, was it entirely because I disapproved, or did part of me want to play the "soft" one so he would be driven to be the "hard" one? I didn't stop him from killing Seychelle. When it came down to it, I helped him. But I didn't make the first move. He did that. A bit of me thought I did it so I could say it wasn't my idea, without it being not my idea, not entirely. Enzo had the guts to do it to someone's face. I tried to say I was noble.

I flinched and dove flat on the ground when I heard a noise. As I twisted to get up, I saw the movement in the cave ceiling. It was just a sponsor gift. No, not just a sponsor gift. A sponsor gift.

There was no need to guess what was in the capsule. A parachute was attached to a metal thermos. I twisted it open and water sloshed around inside. Such a simple gift, and probably not too expensive, since the cave had water. But a beautiful gift. Water that didn't taste like rocks. Water with no silt and crunchy bits in it. Water I didn't have to spend half an hour with my cheek to the wall to drink. Being in the Arena reduced me to my most physical self. I was a human, stripped down to muscle and tissue and bone. Water was the thing I treasured more than anything else in the world.

"Thank you," I said to whoever sent it. Someone out there disagreed with me. Winnowing down the numbers had made me conversely less confident. The most competent among us, in one skill or another, would win. It would descend from there. I couldn't believe I was in the top eight most resilient. With each death that passed I was surer that I wouldn't last one more rank. Top four? Not me. But someone thought otherwise. They thought it enough to spend money on it. And in this world, that was the greatest confidence.

Grande St. Leger- District One male

My skin writhed and curdled tight on my skull. I felt my pulse pricking it from the inside. I was laid bare. The layer that once protected my viscera from exposure was seared to a thin, smooth sheet of paper. My fingers hovered by my face. I knew any touch would be agonizing, but even the air was excruciating against it.

Elissa dove for something and scrabbled on the ground. I saw it, because I couldn't close my eyes. I couldn't close my eyes because the scraping of my seared eyelids was unbearable. It would have caused more tears to add to the ones already scraping down my face and leaving a trail of salt.

She shoved her hand at my face. I screamed and jerked back, but I couldn't avoid her. Her hand oozed sideways across me and instead of the torture I'd expected, she left nothingness in her wake. Only then did I notice the white cream on her hand.

I snatched her hand in both of mine and yanked it to my face. I clung to her as she spread the cream onto me. I sobbed into her hand at the relief it brought. I sat with one hand hovering in the air before my face, suspended in the air between reassurance and trepidation.

Whoever sent this, I will find them. I will give them anything they want. Half my fortune for the person who did this for me. Waves of gratitude crashed through me over and over. I sat shaking all over at the mere absence of pain.

"It says, 'topical analgesic and antiseptic'," Elissa read off the tube from the sponsor package. "So it won't actually heal you. We'll have to go back to the Cornucopia and regroup."

"That's fine," I said. That's fine, that's fine, let's go back and that's fine let's just sit for a bit. Since I came to the Arena, it seemed like my self-preservation had shoved down my anxiety more than medication or therapy ever could. But it wasn't something that would ever leave me. It was like a stalking wolf that might be held at bay for a while by some fortuitous carrion, but would never stop chasing its prey. It was clawing for a grip inside of me. It wanted to feel that shortening of breath, that clamminess in my skin, the voice in my head shrieking that I was dying, the panicking, racing thoughts that changed me from a poised Career to a hyperventilating victim. My stomach heaved with the nausea brought up by my shallow breaths.

"Are you getting bad?" Elissa said. It was our code for a panic attack. It hardly ever happened anymore. I'd learned a lot of wonderful things from Dr. Splendor. But it was hardly a panic attack, really. Panic attacks were disordered thinking. It was hardly at all disordered to be upset by my face being set on fire.

"Let's just go back the Cornucopia," I said. "Just go back and sit a while. It'll be okay then."

We started walking. Take a step, I intoned with each step. Breathe in. Take a step. It's okay to be scared, but a lot of good stuff has happened. Paloma and Jezzebell are gone. The strongest remaining alliance is gone. It's just Meenah and Gavin now. Meenah, Gavin, and Caio. take a step. Get back to the Cornucopia. Breathe slow and take a step.

No deaths this time, to draw out the ending and give everyone extra moments to make it harder to tell who's going to win!